The Sandzak, a Muslim-majority region that straddles the
border between Serbia and Montenegro, is something of a backwater.
Despite the violence that consumed neighbouring Bosnia and
Kosovo as Yugoslavia dissolved in the 1990s and Sandzak’s seemlingly similarly
combustible ethnic mixture, it has remained relatively quiet. It is now the
only region in the former Yugoslavia where significant numbers of Serbs and
Muslims live side-by-side peacefully, if not harmoniously.
But the lack of drama in post-Yugoslav Sandzak is what makes
its story so fascinating, because, but for key decisions taken by ruling powers
over the course of its history, Sandzak might also have suffered a similar fate
to Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s.
The main reason for the Sandzak’s relatively peaceful
post-Yugoslav history is demographic. Its population is tiny. Although the
region is majority Bosniak (Slavic Muslims who identify with the Muslims of
Bosnia), there were just 152,000 Slavic Muslims in central Serbia (not
including the regions of Kosovo and Vojvodina) in 1991 and 78,000 in
Montenegro. These populations, which are concentrated in the Sandzak, are
dwarfed by the Orthodox Christian populations of Serbia and even tiny
Montenegro. While Bosnian Muslims and Kosovo Albanians on the eve of
Yugoslavia’s collapse were in a weak position compared to the Serbs
demographically and otherwise, they at least inhabited territories in which
they were the largest ethnic group and through which they could pursue their
aim of self determination, an option was never really open to the Sandzak
Muslims.
The first key decision in that shaped Sandzak’s present day
circumstances was in 1877, when it had for centuries been part of the Ottoman
Vilayet (province) of Bosnia. As the recently-published and much-needed “Sandzak: A History” by Elizabeth Roberts and
Kenneth Morrison relates: “Measures designed to protect Ottoman territory from
Austria’s designs were ... enacted, among them the redrawing of the
administrative boundary which had hitherto seen Novi Pazar and most of the
present-day Sandzak incorporated in the Vilayet of Bosnia.”
The Ottomans transferred Sandzak from the Bosnian to the
Kosovo Vilayet, but this might have been quickly reversed if hawks in the
Austrian administration had held sway when Austria occupied Bosnia in 1878.
They demanded that the sanjak of Novi Pazar should also be occupied. Instead, Austria
opted for a kind of compromise; the Sandzak remained under Ottoman
administration but fell under joint Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian military
occupation. This ambiguity over Sandzak was still apparent in 1908 when the
Austrians annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, but withdrew from Sandzak, paving the way
for Serbia and Montenegro to achieve their aim of linking up by occupying
Sandzak in the Balkan War of 1912-13. This may not have happened had the Austrians
taken the advice of the German Kaiser, who thought it was “folly” not to help
the Ottomans repel the Serb and Montenegrin advance.
Although Sandzak’s current division between Serbia and
Montenegro can be traced back to decisions taken by the Ottoman and
Austro-Hungarian Empires in their dying days, its fate was sealed during the
Second World War. As the Communist Partisans’ strength grew in Yugoslavia
towards the end of the war they began discussing how its federal structure
would be arranged in peacetime. Muslims wanted to make Sandzak part of the new
republic of Bosnia. Failing this, they wanted it to be either unattached to any
republic or part of Serbia or Montenegro, but not divided between them.
According to Ivo Banac in “With Stalin Against Tito: Cominformist Splits in
Yugoslav Communism” some Serbs and Montenegrins also favoured wholly incorporating Sandzak into their respective federal
units, which in the case of Montenegro would have had the interesting effect of
giving that republic a very large Slavic Muslim minority. The partisans instead
opted for the worst option from the Muslim point of view, reverting to the
situation brought about by the 1912 Balkan War and dividing Sandzak between
Serbia and Montenegro.
Bosniaks in the Sandzak may rue the decisions taken by the
Ottomans, Austrians and Partisans that separated the region from Bosnia, but that
separation probably saved them from the fate of their ethnic kin in
neighbouring parts of Bosnia, which are today part of the ethnically pure “Republika
Srpska”. The Sandzak’s Bosniaks live in Orthodox Christian countries that
haven’t granted them any form of autonomy, but at least Sandzak remains a
Muslim-majority region.
